Since different social structures impose dissimilar consequences upon outputs, the precursor to evaluating the doctrinal consequences that a given social structure imposes is a descriptive effort to characterize its nature. Given the difficulty associated with obtaining appropriate data for federal judges, it is necessary to rely upon a proxy measure to paint a picture of the social landscape. In the aggregate, the authors believe the flow of law clerks reflects a proxy for social and professional linkages between jurists. Having collected available information for all federal judicial law clerks employed by an Article III judge during the natural Rehnquist Court (1995-2004), the authors used these nearly 20,000 clerk events to craft a series of network based visualizations.

Using network analysis, these visualizations and subsequent analytics provide insight into the path of peer effects in the federal judiciary. For example, the authors found the distribution of degrees is consistent with the power law distribution implying the social structure is dictated by a small number of socially prominent actors. Drawing from the complex systems literature, these findings suggest federal judicial actors self-organize at positions of criticality, possibly through Yule's Law. In sum, if social structure matters then these results have significant implications for doctrinal phase transition and the evolution of the law.